So I thought it was about time to let everyone know what happened.

It’s really simple.

Elizabeth felt she needed independence. Whether because of my obnoxious personality, or a desire to find who she is, or the stress of senior year, or a mix of all of that and more, she felt it was in her best interest to end the relationship now then try and make it work and find herself unhappy down the road married and us end in divorce.

I won’t lie. It’s extremely tough. I love her, and don’t regret the last three years we’ve spent together. I know I’m flawed but if for once in my life I’ll brag on myself, I’m a pretty loyal, devoted, and selfless boyfriend. I’m very giving, and that means that sometimes I have to give up my desire to be happy with her to let her be happy with herself. It’s not easy to let go of the first girl I can truly say I loved. So much so that given the chance I’d still be with her, but life doesn’t always let you have what you want.

I’m writing this so everyone has a glimpse into what is going on in my life.

I thought I had everything planned. Marry the girl of my dreams. Go explore the world. Have a family. But it’s just not time. One day I will but for now its my time to be me, to enjoy life, and to be still and know that everything will work out.

She was the best girl I’ve ever been around, but she won’t be the only one. There are wonderful people still for me to meet. It’s weird imagining who that might be but as time goes on, I’ll heal.

I can honestly say I didn’t see this coming. I can also honestly say I’m sure it’s more of my fault than I can think of. I’m sure somewhere I messed things up somehow. I don’t know what that is but it would be foolish of me to think you can go one week planning a wedding and the next week breaking up and it not be some of my fault. But I don’t regret a single minute of the last three years and I hope that a guy comes into her life that will make her more happy than I was able to. This is the first relationship I can honestly say I wish the best for her and I’m sorry I couldn’t be the man she needed me to be.

But life goes on. So now that you have a glimpse at what has happened, pray for me. Pray for her. Pray we find what it is we need and that there are no regrets. I don’t believe anything can truly prosper without hard work, even complex things can be fixed through working through the situation rather than giving up. Pray we both work through these complex times and find ourselves better on the other side. It’s hard to be engaged to someone and lose them. I’ll have baggage that I’ll have to deal with in my next relationship. Pray I handle it well.

So I’ve had some time to marinate about this weekend I just experienced. To start off I want to say that I have never had a weekend like this before. I was beyond challenged to think of what it means to truly care about something. Now I am not saying that if you decide not to do something like MOVE:DC that you don’t care because people show care through different actions. But actually going to this event is the only way I knew how to show my love and care. There are children being abducted, raped, murdered, and forced to be child soldiers and we’ve been given 2 options. Be an upstander or a bystander. I refuse to be the latter and it meant road tripping 15 hours to DC and spending my weekend in a global summit and marching around the White House. The friendships I made and the experiences I had will forever haunt me in a way that challenges me. I had the opportunity to talk and feed a homeless drug dealer. I was able to give of my time and money to a cause that is trying everything to stop a 26 year war, and in the words of Sean Stephenson, if you have haters than it means you are doing something right. No one hates on you for sitting on the couch. No one hates on you for playing video games, that is what they expect of you. They hate you when you start making a difference and they aren’t. Gary Haugen of IJM said, ” The grow ups in these buildings [the buildings of DC] won’t do anything about this conflict. They won’t do anything because its too complicated, well civil rights were too complicated, women’s rights were too complicated, the holocaust was too complicated, but when we look back on it now it’s not so complicated. That’s why it takes a generation willing to fight through the complexity for change to happen.” I find myself constantly fighting with everything I’ve been taught, to see a new form of theology. My fiancé showed me this, love everyone. It’s that simple. I have a degree in church ministry and cross cultural communication and community development. In simple terms I know a shit ton about the bible. But in all that knowledge I still don’t know how to give people Christ. But it’s simple. You love them. As they are. Gay, straight, black, white, Muslim, Christian, left, right, democrat, republican, conservative, liberal. It doesn’t matter. Love them. I would rather God tell me I had my theology wrong but at least you loved people than have him say your theology was spot on but you didn’t love people. So that’s what I’ll do. I’ll fight for the voiceless. I’ll love others. I will put my preconceived notions of God on the shelf and let his mystery unravel before me at His choosing. If I never learn a new thing about God but I love people then I know I’ve lived a life worth living. I think God has enough grace to forgive me for never speaking “truth” into a “sinner’s” life when instead I’m loving a human being the way he created them. That’s what MOVE:DC taught me and even if people disagree, that’s okay. I’m done pretending I know who God is, what He wants, or to know His knowledge. Because His wisdom beats out my knowledge every time. He has shown me that every time I think I know Him more that His mystery is always bigger. I’ll continue to seek Him out, but I will not be apart of the machine that enslaves people with doctrine, or enslaves people with a list of to do’s. I will set the captives free… With love.

Besides it seems to me there are already plenty of people who know exactly what God’s word says so I’ll let them speak the “truth”. {sarcasm}

I hope that when our grandchildren ask us, “Where were you when the LRA killed thousands?” We can say, “I showed up, I did my part, and I saw an end to the violence.” The question is, will you be able to say the same?

As time goes on I get more and more frustrated that people tell others how things “should” be. I understand there are norms for a reason. But if every single person is created individually and is not the same as anyone else, then why do we constantly tell each other that what they are doing, who they are, what they like, or where they are in life isn’t where they should be? What ruler do we use to judge that? What scales or measurements are big enough to say in confidence that they are wrong? Just because that something doesn’t work for you doesn’t mean it won’t work for me. Example: you go to college and are successful, it doesn’t mean I have to go to college to be successful. You’re level of success isn’t my level. That works for relationships, jobs, goals, and dreams. So stop telling others that “this should be this way” when reality is, it isn’t. If it is suppose to be that way then I think eventually it will. Otherwise I hate to break it to you, but it wasn’t meant to be.

So the other day I was being an idiot. You know when someone is wrong, and in all of your wonderful knowledge you decide to set them straight? That moment when you feel the need to let people know, “Hey, I have the right answers!” Well that happened to be me, and the person I was letting know this “wonderful truth” happened to be my fiance.

You see my life has been super hectic lately, so much so that we haven’t really been able to spend time together. I felt like she hadn’t really considered that she hadn’t shown me any affection in awhile. I mean heck we hadn’t seen each other in what felt like forever. So as I tell her how I feel she turns away from me. She doesn’t fight me and say how I am wrong or how I wasn’t showing her any, instead she just turns away from me and starts to cry. Remember earlier about me being an idiot, it was around this time I realized it.

So in my NEW found knowledge I decided, “I need to make this right.” It’s not rocket science to know you don’t act this way, but I have never claimed to be smart. So I start to try and make my apology attempt, but I want her to know that I am being sincere and apologizing because I realize what an idiot I was being, so I try and get her to look at me. She won’t respond. I keep asking her, “Baby, will you look at me please?” “Baby I want to tell you something, can you turn around?” With tears in her eyes she keeps saying no. I cannot get her to look at me. I finally out of desperation and frustration ask her, “WHY WON’T YOU LOOK AT ME?” She said something to me that I will never forget.

“I don’t deserve to look at you.”

I felt as if someone just punched me right in the gut. A freaking one two upper cut straight to the abdomen. I remember thinking, “Why would you ever think you don’t deserve to look at me?” She kept repeating that she hadn’t earned the right to look at me because she hadn’t been even attentive to me or even seen me in awhile. I remember just saying to her, “The problem is we aren’t giving each other attention, so you not looking at me isn’t helping that.” Of course that sounds mean, but my intentions are this:

You cannot do anything that would make me not want to see you.

It was here when I grabbed her and wrapped my arms around her and said this, “There is nothing you can do to ever not deserve my attention, you can straight up murder somebody, I hope you won’t, but you can, and I would still want to give you my attention.”

I realized this is how I treat God. When I do something that I feel would disappoint Him I say to myself, “I don’t deserve to look at you.” The entire time God is saying, “The way we fix this is for you to do just the opposite.” “Look at me, know you cannot do anything where I would not want to give you My attention.” I was telling my fiance that we can fix this whole fight if she would look at me so I could tell her I am sorry. God was saying, “if you understand this is how it works, then why is it when you feel you’ve messed up and can’t look at me, you won’t follow this example?” He wants me to just look at Him. He wants me to see the way we fix it is to not turn away.

I am slowly getting better at being a good fiance, but it’s times like these that help me realize I have a long way to go. Don’t turn away from Him or others when you act dumb, face them. Look them in the eyes and show them, “I want you to have my attention, because I love you and would like to make this right.” Wrap your arms around them and say you’re sorry. 

http://t.co/O5vcdA6C this link tries to poke holes in Invisible Children’s hard work and dedication. Read it then read the response I’ve posted here so you can understand the real truth about IC and how wrong these smear campaigners are.

The critiques levied at this campaign are terrible.

Mr. Keating, you complain about the fact that the film only mentions that the LRA left Uganda once. Seriously? How many times do you like brief videos explaining a complicated situation to repeat basic facts? For anyone who was paying attention to the video, there was a graphic and a clear explanation of the LRA movement out of Uganda. Message received. For anyone who bothers to research, they can find out that the LRA operates in several countries, but that the militaries of those nations have been less effective than the Ugandan forces and represent a less reasonable investment for the US’s time and resources. (Hence the emphasis on providing military aid to Uganda and not CAR or the DRC.)

After complaining that it is hard to understand things when are said only once, you then complain that it’s unclear to you what the organization’s aims are. Well, from the video it’s obvious that they are promoting the arrest and trial of a war criminal before the end of 2012. That’s a pretty clear goal, in my opinion. If - again - you bother to visit the organization’s website after seeing the video, you’ll see that they also spell out a five point protection plan for ending the LRA conflict as well as their initiatives for promoting education.

You follow this baseless complaint by reversing yourself - essentially saying “oh wait, the aim of the campaign is clear: it’s to ensure that the advisers remain deployed and to promote awareness of the issue.” But you follow that by questioning why anyone would do this. Really? When the US has a trillion dollar debt and people are fuming over foreign entanglements that have cost the country billions and it is an election year, you REALLY question the necessity of this kind of work? Anyone who fails to advocate for their interests until their program is on the chopping block has totally failed to appreciate how the US political system works.

Of course, my favorite criticism in this piece is the snarky self-righteous references to the White Man’s Burden, vaguely implying that the white filmmaker is a racist and an elitist because he has chosen to devote his time and energy to a cause that doesn’t involve other white people. That’s such a cynical and gross tactic to ensure that any charity that Americans engage in abroad is tainted by the transgressions of every colonial enterprise ever attempted anywhere in the world. With a worldview like that, why ever even bother to show an interest in foreign policy?

Finally, you finish your smear campaign selecting to quote a token Ugandan journalist who seemingly supports your view that the investment in capturing a war criminal is a bad one. He thinks that Nodding Disease and HIV/AIDS are more deserving causes than the one that Invisible Children champions. Of course, the next minute you dismiss those issues that your journalist raises by talking about how the infrastructure of Uganda is riddled with rampant corruption, human rights abuses, and minimal social services. Oh - and the impending catastrophe of oil. The implication here is, of course, “why bother?”. Super message you’re sending there. After all, what’s one war criminal compared to the rest of the mess that Uganda and many other African nations are embroiled in?

Thanks for the armchair criticism. It’s so much more effective to call activists advocating passionately for aid to end a conflict naive racists while while convincing everyone else that Uganda is beyond saving. In your world, it’s also apparently better to never ever attempt to highlight any issue in any publicity campaign because God-forbid you can’t cover all the complexities of geopolitics in a 30-min awareness-raising video.

Seriously - my disgust with this smear piece is total. This was awful. There is only one thing that can sum this up adequately: “I award you no points, and may God have mercy on your soul.”
I absolutely agree that Uganda (and, for that matter, other African nations) are in need of more than the arrest of one heinous criminal and “some schools.” I actually have no problem with thoughtful criticism of IC - but that’s not what Wilkerson did here. He first accused Jason Russell of preying on the emotions of his audience, which is unfair when his explicitly stated goal was to get viewers to connect on a human level with the horrible atrocities that occurred in Uganda and other nations. He then accused IC - very unfairly - of failing to provide information that was in fact included in the Kony2012 video. When he does acknowledge that the aforementioned information was provided, he complains that it is oversimplified (which should be expected given the format) or confusing on the basis that twitterverse screwed up the hashtags. Finally, he offers the race/class criticism I described above, which in my opinion was gross and undignified.

Where you see you see Wilkerson’s allusions to the complexities of the Ugandan situation as a “deep concern for holistic and long-term development,” I see a missed opportunity. If not IC - where would Mr. Wilkerson like his readers to direct their energy? He certainly does not offer any constructive alternative on this score. Rather, he seems to imply that the development situation is so complex that no proactive assistance can possibly be offered from the well-meaning but ignorant hordes who were moved by the IC video. Additionally, while the removal of tyrants, dictators and other powerful thuggish actors from positions of power always causes some disruption, Mr. Wilkerson questions the benefit of bringing a internationally-indicted criminal to justice. By that logic, why even have an ICC? Dealing with war criminals is just so damn inconvenient. I’m all for holistic solutions, but I’m certainly anti-handwringing and anti-capitulating, which is the tone that Mr. Wilkerson took in this piece.

If Mr. Wilkerson - or any other critics - want to take issue with the IC video, they would do well to provide objective criticisms rather than character attacks against Jason Russell. They would also do well to offer alternative engagement models for the audience the IC film is targeting rather than complaining that a propaganda film designed for social media isn’t nuanced enough. In other words; lead, follow, or get out of the way.

Tumblr is full of people who talk about love, post pictures about love, and say how much they love things, ideas, and persons. But the truth is love goes beyond that. Love is bigger than that… If you were to take a poll love would be something as simple as breathing, but as complex as sub atomic quantum physics. Yet to me it is neither. It comes down to one thing… It takes removing of one’s self from the equation. I love my fiance so much that my individual life comes second to hers. This is real love. Love requires sacrifice, when people understand this, the cliche, sappy, cute love poems, pictures, and things that scratch the surface of what love is would mean so much more than just a way to seem cute. Love isn’t something that allows you to sum it up in a word or two, you can’t sum it up in a picture with a heart on it, and it definitely won’t allow you to love someone one minute and just fall out of love the next, real love, genuine love, authentic love allows your heart to be completely shattered one moment and miraculously healed the next by the same person. It allows you to look past every flaw, mess up, and stain to see that person as perfection regardless of how untrue they fit that title, because love takes sacrifice, the sacrifice of one’s self to see your lover as more than you.

To my lover:

I don’t care who sees it, I don’t care who hears it. The truth is that I have never loved someone the way I love you. It doesn’t matter if you deserve better or you feel I am the one deserving, the one basic and simple truth is that God has put you in my life and short of Him taking you out of it, I will continue to love you this way. There is nothing you can do, say, or think that will change this. You are the only one whose letters I keep, you are the only one whose texts I save. You are the only one whose voice I crave, and whose touch I long for. You are the only one who knows how to calm my heart and make it beat faster than adrenaline could ever get it pumping. You have changed my life and regardless of how many people think they know what love is, I know without a shadow of a doubt that what we have is exactly what people dream of, real, authentic, compassionate, genuine, kindhearted, wonderful love. Once you realize this, accept the truth, and allow yourself to see that you are deserving, worthy, and made for this love, then you will see you the way I see you, beautifully and wonderfully made. I love you baby, don’t you forget it.

This is a song I wrote for my older brothers. One of which who is going through a rough patch in life. None of these lyrics talk about the situtation but all point to one truth… No matter how hard life is going, you can look to the Son and see that when we lose heart and our fear he is there to guide us.

John & Larry (Stand Tall, Stand Strong)
Like a kite stuck in the power lines you are shocked to find you cannot fly
Like a fox whose been put in a hole the only way out is to face the dogs
Like a man whose lungs fail to fill you find that losing is your final win
Like giving up your favorite toy you find that it’s wasn’t as sweet as you thought it to be
Life is full of disappointments but it would be worse if you view it so
Look to the Son to see it clear the beauty in losing heart and losing fear
Stand tall
Stand strong
Woooooah
Woooooah